Jackie Danicki

Journalist Dennis Howlett makes some very good points about trackback spam and its effect on corporate blogging. This goes quite nicely with my stance on the problems that Steve Rubel has had of late with inauthentic trackbacks being sent by a blogger who thinks that, because his post is merely related to one of Steve’s, it warrants a trackback - despite the fact that he doesn’t bother to link to Steve in his own post.

Tactics like these are only diluting the value of trackback, which I have removed totally from (all but one of*) my personal blogs for just this reason: I don’t have time to filter 500+ trackbacks a day, just to find the authentic ones. I don’t know about you, but my time is worth a hell of a lot. Companies feel similarly about theirs. If you don’t even bother to link to my piece in your post, you’re stealing as much time from me as the Texas hold ‘em spammers, with exactly the same return: zilch.

* Hillary Johnson and I haven’t had any problems with trackback spam on our Typepad- powered beauty blog yet. As soon as we do, those suckers are gone.

Filed under: Life